THE LAST OF US Co-Creator Explains Why One of the Game’s Most Gut-Wrenching Moments Was Cut from Season 2

“You get one dog murdering episode a lifetime.”

The second season of The Last of Us didn’t exactly hold back. Across its seven episodes, it dove headfirst into the brutal emotional terrain of the game’s second chapter, highlighting the moral fog, the violence, and the very human messiness that made Part II so unforgettable.

But as intense as the season finale got, one of the game’s most notorious moments was noticeably missing, and now we know why.

Spoilers ahead for Season 2, Episode 7 of The Last of Us:

In the finale, Ellie arrives at the derelict aquarium in search of Abby, and in the process kills two of Abby’s closest friends, Owen and Mel.

The latter, we find out too late, was pregnant. It’s a harrowing scene pulled straight from the game. But there’s one character from the original sequence that never shows up in the show, Alice, Abby’s German Shepherd.

In The Last of Us Part II, Alice is a dog players spend time with. She’s loyal, trained, and lovable, which makes it all the more crushing when Ellie kills her during the same aquarium sequence.

For those who played the game, the absence of Alice in the show was glaring. According to co-showrunner Craig Mazin, that omission was a very intentional and very calculated decision.

"You get one dog murdering episode a lifetime. There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood. One, don't spend your own money. Two, don't kill the dog."

While that might sound like a joke (and partially is), Mazin went deeper, explaining the visceral difference between video game violence and what we see in live-action.

“We had a situation where a number of horrible things were happening. Plus, because it's live action, the nature of violence becomes much more graphic. It's more graphic. Because it's not like there's an animation between you and it; it's people. And it's very disturbing.”

So what works, or at least functions, emotionally in a game doesn’t always translate in the same way to television. The weight of killing a dog, especially one that viewers might come to care about, hits very differently when there’s no digital layer buffering it.

And given how heavy the rest of the finale already was, Mazin and the creative team felt that adding Alice’s death on top would’ve pushed things too far. "It just ended up being overkill," he admitted.

It’s a tough call. On one hand, omitting Alice changes the texture of the scene for fans who know what happened in the game. But on the other, Mazin’s logic makes sense as there’s a tipping point where emotional storytelling becomes emotional punishment.